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Post by Deleted on Nov 26, 2011 19:30:28 GMT
I think just about all of us do this - buy something we don't need to get an extra discount or more than we need "for extra savings." Sometimes it gets ridiculously extreme, though, like with me today. I was buying something for 44€ and then I saw all of the posters screaming that I could get a 10€ gift certificate for every 100€ spent. So I proceeded to add another item that I absolutely did not need for 79€.
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Post by spindrift on Nov 28, 2011 22:08:36 GMT
I never do that.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 29, 2011 6:31:18 GMT
I saw the last post notification for this thread on the main page and read it as:
Yesterday at 4:08pm by spendthrift in Pretending to save money
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Post by auntieannie on Nov 29, 2011 12:33:59 GMT
K2, that's a typical bloke's mistake. I don't do that either.
But I WAS pretending to save money by having a paying housemate. Well... I can say that I am saving real money now living alone.
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Post by tod2 on Nov 29, 2011 16:09:37 GMT
Kerouac you and my husband should go shopping together..... If that man brings home one more tin of canned peaches, peanut butter, pilchards in tomato sauce.........., I think my store cupboard shelves will cave in All being given away at discount prices you'll never see again
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Post by spindrift on Dec 2, 2011 19:38:20 GMT
A friend of mine can't resist buying BOGOF offers of chocolate digestives - he's getting enormously fat.
BOGOF = Buy One Get One Free.
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Post by joanne28 on Dec 5, 2011 16:49:30 GMT
I've done that on items I actually use so it's not too bad. However, a financial guru here says you actually haven't saved any money unless you take the savings & put them into your bank account (or piggy bank, for the financially challenged among us . This certainly makes sense but I haven't got there yet. I do, however, put all my change at the end of the day in my piggy bank. Since we have $1 & $2 coins, this adds up to anywhere between $800 and $1,000 a year. Makes rolling up the coins so much fun (I'm very easily amused) and no, I don't save pennies!
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Dec 5, 2011 20:02:58 GMT
I would only use BOGOF if it was something that I actually needed..
Panorama this evening is about supermarket price wars...and the devious techniques they employ to trick us into thinking that we've got a bargain...
With their price drops, rollbacks and brand matches - as well as that old firm favourite, the two-for-one offer - Britain's leading supermarkets are doing battle for customers' cash. They claim their price war is good news for shoppers in these tough times, but are their money-saving offers all they seem?
Sophie Raworth takes her trolley round the aisles of Britain's biggest supermarket chains and reveals some nasty surprises at the checkout.
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Post by mich64 on Dec 5, 2011 23:34:44 GMT
Joanne, I agree about the 1's and 2 coins, my husband asked me if I had any change as he is going out tonight for his shifts Christmas Party. I put my hand into a compartment in my purse where I put my change in and was able to give him $18.00! and that was collected just over a couple of weeks. Handy little loonie and toonie's they are!
Cheers! Mich
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Post by rikita on Dec 6, 2011 21:17:09 GMT
hm, if i put all my coins away at the end of a day, i'd have a problem. i constantly need coins. on the one hand, to pay for things where they don't always have change if i pay with a bigger note (like the climbing place i go to on mondays), and then for shopping cards, library lockers and all that... i always try to break up paper money as soon as i can...
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Post by lagatta on Dec 7, 2011 1:44:15 GMT
Of course 1€ and 2€ coins are worth considerably more than Canadian loonies and toonies.
What are shopping cards, rikita? In Germany, I just paid € in cash at supermarkets and such. Yes, even as a tourist one needs coins for museum lockers, and in some places for public toilets.
I do read through supermarket etc fliyers (on paper and online) and write down and cross-check the best bargains. But another false economy is deep discounts on crap foods one wouldn't necessarily buy otherwise - overprocessed, too sweet and salty "food products" that are often featured in supermarket flyers (circulars, publicity).
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Post by fumobici on Dec 7, 2011 2:25:00 GMT
Perhaps she meant shopping carts? In Italy at the supermarket one sometimes has to insert a Euro coin into the mechanism to get a cart out and you get it back when you return it. That's how the COOP does it at any rate.
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Post by rikita on Dec 7, 2011 19:36:52 GMT
yes sorry, was a typo, i meant shopping carts...
hm, i never check flyers to compare offers. i sometimes look for special offers (like my computer is from a supermarket), but food wise, these days, i tend to not buy the cheapest one anymore, as i prefer to buy bio-food (and preferably from small bio-shops where i think the people that run them don't do it just out of trying to make a business by calling everything "bio", but really care about what they sell - though since i lost my job i am going back to the cheaper food a bit more)
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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2012 13:55:01 GMT
Two of the euro zone countries have eliminated their 0.01 and 0.02 coins (Finland and Netherlands). Unless the cost of making the small coins is too expensive, as has been pointed out in the United States and Canada, I really do not understand what these countries are saving.
I do find it rather ridiculous to debate the elimination of small coins according to their minting costs (2.41 cents to make a US 0.01 and 11.18 cents to make a 0.05), because coins are meant to circulate for 30 years or more. It is only if the value of the metal is greater than the value of the coin that there is a problem.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 19, 2012 9:02:59 GMT
I have been buying too much useless extra food, because my stock of luncheon vouchers from 2012 is still too big, and they will expire on 31 January 2013. Since supermarkets are supposed to accept luncheon vouchers only for immediately consumable food, I can't even stock up on canned goods with them -- except perhaps sardines, for which my requirements are relatively small.
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Post by tod2 on Dec 19, 2012 10:11:47 GMT
I can only think of one solution ( if it is at all possible) and that is to give the excess vouchers to some homeless people. Even an old drunk clochard....is that the right name for a tramp? Maybe they like sardines ;D
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Post by Deleted on Dec 19, 2012 11:08:11 GMT
Well yes, that's what we all do, but all of beggars in my neighbourhood know me too well and they unfortunately become very insistent every time I see them when I have given them something in the past -- and not even politely insistent in many cases; they seem to feel that I owe it to them. So the only solution is to hand them out in areas other than my own, and that is what I am likely to do in the end. I would like to give some to the young Afghan and Iraqi refugees, but they are often in big groups, so I can't give to some and not to others...
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Post by htmb on Dec 19, 2012 11:46:28 GMT
Are your luncheon vouchers something left over from working days, Kerouac?
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Post by tod2 on Dec 19, 2012 17:13:36 GMT
Hey, what about the dedicated staff at your mother's nursing home - or would that be like an insult?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2012 12:12:21 GMT
Are your luncheon vouchers something left over from working days, Kerouac? Yes, you receive one luncheon voucher per day worked. Hey, what about the dedicated staff at your mother's nursing home - or would that be like an insult? It sort of would be -- not to mention all of the staff that I never see being just as deserving -- the night caretakers who start at 9 p.m. and even a lot of the morning staff. Actually, my company will exchange them around mid-January if I ask them to, so I will just try to keep using them within reason. I was looking for some likely beggars around town, but since it has been practically non stop rain for days, most of the beggars are off the street.
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Post by anshjain97 on Jan 10, 2013 16:33:37 GMT
I am a very non-impulsive shopper. If I look at something, and I want it, and I think it'll make my life better, I would then think 5-10 about the opportunity cost. In 99% of cases, I don't end up buying anything.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2013 17:45:50 GMT
That's because you have not entered your major earning years yet.
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Post by anshjain97 on Jan 11, 2013 13:25:26 GMT
Despite it, we go to malls fairly frequently and I NEVER buy anything, except for food. If I need to buy, I will go specially for it.
I am very picky as well- I examined several souvenirs without picking any, which pissed the seller off, in Venice. And I bargained hard, too, in South east Asia.
You will never see me fooled by such offers as you describe in OP. Not even an impulse of "OH wow, that sounds nice!"
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Post by mossie on Jan 11, 2013 19:53:50 GMT
I'm with Anshjain, but I'm passed my earning years
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Post by lagatta on Jan 12, 2013 23:21:35 GMT
rikita, I buy bio as much as I can afford - for staples like flour and pasta, for one thing. It is funny how much crap food is "bio" now. Sure, there are fewer chemicals and bizarre flavouring agents in bio crisps, but they are just as fatty and salty as regular ones.
In the summertime, I really buy local food from small producers, some certified, some not. It is very difficult here for that in the winter, and in any event, I make sure I eat enough vegetables (and some fruit).
I certainly understand not going for the cheapest overall in Germany, which would mean Aldi and Lidl! Oh, I do buy stuff from the nearby one in Amsterdam when I'm there - they had some very good wholemeal rye bread, with no additives, for a cheap price (and it was made either in Netherlands or Germany, not somewhere strange). But a family having to do their main shopping there would be consuming some very dubious stuff indeed!
I still remember the WONDERFUL cherries, bread and cheese I bought in little open-air bio markets in Germany!
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Post by lagatta on Mar 3, 2013 2:36:17 GMT
For some reason I can't fathom, I've been spending far too much money with nothing really to show for it just recently. Not gone on a food or drink binge - I'm very careful what I buy. Not much clothing either. It is most strange.
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Post by nutraxfornerves on Mar 3, 2013 3:00:38 GMT
When I was a kid, my father did that--every night he emptied his pockets of coins into an old vase.
Several times a year, we'd have "family game night." We didn't play Candyland or Monopoly; we played poker. All those coins were the chips. When it was all over, we rolled them up. They were then deposited equally into the savings accounts that had been set up for my brother & me almost at birth.
It taught me the virtues of saving, especially when I had a nice nest egg when I came of age. (We were also required to put half of any Christmas or birthday money into the account.) It also taught me to be very good at poker, but that's a whole 'nother story.
Nutrax
The plural of anecdote is not data.
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Post by Deleted on May 14, 2013 11:58:29 GMT
As MGMT would say, it's time to pretend.
Virgin Megastore in France has just started its bankruptcy liquidation sale and even though I don't need anything, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to go to my local one before all of the shelves are empty.
Unfortunately, French law prevents them from putting books on sale.
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Post by Deleted on May 14, 2013 14:11:04 GMT
Now that I have returned from the store, it is easier to believe that I actually saved money. I had to wait 45 minutes to get in and most of the shelves were already empty, but I ended up buying merchandise with a face value of 140.90€ and I paid a grand total of 3.64€.
But since I really didn't need anything and was not able to find the one or two items that I really intend to buy some day, I guess you can say that I actually lost 3.64€.
The cashiers seemed to be on the verge of tears, working so hard on the final days of the remaining stores and collecting nearly nothing.
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